Mandvi: Why are surgeons the only ones allowed to perform surgeries?
Blithering Republican: Absolutely.
Mandvi: Doesn’t make any sense.
BR: It never makes any sense!
Mandvi: and the only other people who can check whether they’re manipulating…
BR: are other scientists!

It also features Marty Chalfie defending himself against accusations of rape.

Comments

I watched this last night and my jaw dropped over how anti-science, anti-education, anti-learning that woman was, and cheerfully so! And apparently facts are anti-freedom, or at least the teaching of facts.

Oh, I saw that. I couldn’t believe (well, I could, but wish I couldn’t) that the rethug was that clueless. The new national platform seems to be that education is worthless. What’s worse is that she didn’t even catch on to the fact that she was being mocked. I never thought I’d hear the term “scientist” used as an insult.

This is from a few years ago, but it seems that they still feel this way: “We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture” – as if being intelligent and educated are a bad thing.

I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoy regular daily show episodes. While Jon Stewart is really good in exposing hypocrisy and the woeful state of American media, he is pretty weak when it comes to science. I remember once he appeared in Bill O’reilly’s show and he accused him (Jon Stewart) of believing in global warming and Jon Stewart’s answer was that he does not know which side is right. In this episode, he only mentioned the recent study which was not even relevant to “climategate” while ignoring that at least 4 or 5 different and independent investigations were launched into the hacked emails and none found serious fault with the science or the scientists.

I’ve also said about Stewart that he’s much too wishy-washy, but if you listen to Neil Tyson’s podcast in which he interviews him, you’d see he does know better. A whole LOT better than he lets everyone know in his show and standup. The Stephen Colbert interview is also great, btw, but I’ve always thought he was much more scientifically inclined than Stewart, despite being supposedly a devout catholic.

thomasgrainger: If you have Firefox, download the add-on ‘Modify Headers’ and then go to Youtube and search ‘modify headers us’. There’s a 7ish minute video explaing how to use it. He uses the The Daily Show as an example, actually.

There is an explanation for this. Today’s conservatives live in a world where ideology is all that matters.

Karl Rove apparently explained it thusly:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.” He continued “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.- Ron suskind, attributed to Karl Rove

I remember thinking that after Obama was elected in ’08, the Daily Show might have a hard time finding material to work with. George Bush and his supporters were a goldmine, comedically, and they were on the way out.

If I had known that conservatives/Republicans were going to have the intellectual meltdown they’re currently in, the thought above would have never crossed my mind.

This dovetails nicely with the GOP efforts to slime Elizabeth Warren, who is running for Senator in MA against Scott Brown. Their method: she is referred to as Professor Warren because she taught at Harvard.

This being in MA, home to some of the finest Universities in the world of which the state is justifiably proud. Mississippi, sure. Texas. Absolutely. But Massachusetts? It just demonstrates the contempt held by the mouth-breathers for education.

1) I cannot believe that republican rep is not an actress following the Daily show script to make fun of real Republicans. No way. Nobody is that stupid, right? right? Common… right?

2) Palatial research facilities. Great stuff.

3) “A rapist would say that”. More great stuff.

4) Lisa Randall Rocks the house. She makes her comments with such intelligence and clarity. She just oozes credibility. She and Neil will bring Science back to the mainstream (I hope). Maybe there is hope for our species after all.

You liberals don’t get it because you hate America and are jealous of the riches that rich people richly deserve.

Science may make you feel good about yourself, with its “oh, let’s discover this and let’s discover that for the sake of mankind,” but let’s get real. The only thing that has ever worked is free market capitalism.

The proper model is for scientists to provide answers the the highest bidder, providing the answers the market wants rather than what the scientist thinks reality wants.

Lisa Randall didnt answer one of Stewart’s questions. It seemed that he was asking about how science had become an endeavour that had no room for the average (smart)person tinkering in their garage. How it was all some elite and esoteric endeavour beyond the reach of the little guy (you know the american conceit for the average guy that is expressed ad nauseam)…

She should have debunked that notion firmly. Even primary school kids can do original research and get published in journals.

Does O Reilly deny climate change now? I remember a while back that he was one of the very few wingnuts who accepted that we were warming the planet. Maybe, he realised that him accepting reality made him a wicked intellectual elitist to his audience and so had to flip flop to appease the morons. It is really depressing how much loathing conservatives have for science and education. Where did their sense of wonder and curiosity go?

Right, it is the “Ämerican” to revile and mock scientists but uncritically lap up all the bullshit politicians and preachers feed them?

Going by rightwing idiots on the internet, there are plenty of takers for this bullshit.

It’s hard to think for yourself and take responsibility for your bad decisions. It’s easier to let people tell you what’s right and blindly accept it until it comes back to bite you in the ass. At that point, you change your tune, but you blame either (a) the people that have been speaking truth for not telling you the truth loudly enough or (b) an easily identified minority demographic that you don’t belong to.

While we are all voting that Climate Change doesn’t exist, can we also vote to get rid of cancer, infant mortality, obesity, the need for oil, and “Jersey Shore” (just to name a few)?

The real kicker is, even if voting for the truth worked, conservatives would still lose. Sin of all sorts would go way up, as people would vote out all potential negative consequences for it. I really hate to burst their bubble, but the puritans who would vote in favor of hangovers and STDs (as appropriate punishments) would be greatly outnumbered by the folks who don’t like those things.

And as you pointed out about oil, most big businesses would collapse as we wouldn’t need them. The oil lobby isn’t going to have a lot of power when nobody needs oil. :)

The whole thing is a pipe dream, but even so, it’s a liberal progressive pipe dream. Any conservative who thinks this is the way the world ought to work had better check what they’re smoking.

Stewart is a flabby friend of science, at best. When “climategate” first broke almost two years ago, he fell for it as hard as any talking head on Fox News. It is therefore particularly hypocritical of him to criticize other broadcast media for not covering this latest (and BTW, unrelated) story, since he ignored multiple independent investigations that cleared the scientists involved of any wrongdoing.

I wish I could say that any of this surprises me. Funny, people like Noelle Nikpour are kept alive and live a high standard of life thanks to the efforts of the people she makes a living under minding.

That would explain a lot actually. Wingnuts are a tremendously tribal lot. One of the most annoying attitudes I come across is when people grumble about their tax dollars funding research. It leads to nincompoops like Sarah Palin claiming how terrible it is that those eggheads are using tax payer money to do research on fruit flies.

Again it comes back to the lack of wonder and curiosity. If you were interested in fruit fly research you would realise that not only is it fascinating in the sense of discovering how mutations work (and how humans have many genetic similarities with fruit flies), you also would be interested to learn how this research can be of great use in medicine and biotechnology. I think this fact should make people not only happy to fund such research but demand their tax money fund it and other scientific endeavours rather than pointless wars. But I realise that I’m sort of preaching to the choir here a bit.

You do realize that gold is actually worthless, Fort Knox is empty and the price is being artificially exaggerated, right? I know, because I saw it on a new-ish conspiracy TV show. And all those shows are “realer” than that sciency stuff!

Isn’t there room for comprise here. Atheist say that none of the universe was intelligently designed, and theist say that all of the universe is intelligently designed. My comprise theory is that a god intelligently design some of the universe.

In the interview, Jon Stewert asks Lisa Randel why we’re still stuck on fossil fuels. She replies that as a scientist, she can’t answer that. I would say that the preference for fossil fuels is a matter of economics, not science. The man whom I think sums it up best is Peter Huber:

It leads to nincompoops like Sarah Palin claiming how terrible it is that those eggheads are using tax payer money to do research on fruit flies.

It’s even stupider than that. The “fruit fly” research that Sarah Palin was panning was research on species that are serious and very expensive crop pests in the US, particularly in California. The research was being done in Paris because a) they were co-condicting the research with the frigging Pasteur Institute, and they were conducting the research IN THE NATIVE RANGE OF THE FRUIT FLY.

he explained the process of peer review in a way that illustrates the reactionaries’ fear – their fear is a result of their ignorance. the reality is that people CAN verify what scientists say if they are willing to take the time to educate themselves – with a grounding in the sciences and math anyone can go to a public university and access research. but that requires someone to do something other than spout unsupported claims – and admitting the anti-science bias among too many conservatives calls into question their foundational beliefs, as well.

and that’s why it’s easier for them to attack science rather than try to understand it.

“It is difficult to get a man (or woman) to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair

That quote would apply to most religious and political conservative mouthpieces.

Lisa Randall is really smart, one of the leading people on Gravity and High Energy Physics of the last decade. If extra dimensions turn out to exist after all, she has chances of getting a Nobel. My first reaction to that question was – why is a brilliant high energy theorist expected to have opinions on fossil fuels? There are legions of actual energy theorists out there yelling ask me! ask me! I actually know this stuff!. So often, Nobel Prize winners are expected to say something smart about all kinds of things far from their expertise, which can go terribly wrong – for example someone in particular who built a superconducting device in his PhD, when he is asked what he thinks of the nature of reality.

Then, on second thought, I thought, hey, it should be a challenge to everyone with a big brain (and brane, in this case) to spend at least some time thinking about these fundamental practical questions of humanity. (A fun example of that is CERNs own Carlo Rubbia. Love him or hate him, he is definitely engaging the energy problem.)

But what is the most important thing here is probably not so much whether Lisa Randall has done research in energy technology, but rather that today, any popular person of science has the responsibility to act as a beacon of sanity and reason in the media landscape, no matter what the topic.

people CAN verify what scientists say if they are willing to take the time to educate themselves

Yep. Maybe one should make the public (in particular the American so it seems) more aware of the fact that scientists are no more and no less than ordinary people (I sure am… *cough*) who have done hard work to understand a subject in depth, not alien brainz monsters bred in underground scientist production facilities. I think Brian Cox for example is doing a nice job giving science and scientists a human(e) face, as is Neil deGrasse Tyson in my opinion (me big fan).

Why do they talk like scientists are a cult, these are all rich people, whats stopping them from getting a degree in science if they are so suspcious. They could do some labwork, see some evidence. Hell, they can do some of those things even without a degree in science!

Not too long ago, we had Con-Pffffft-pedia asserting that reality had a liberal bias. Now they are editing the Bible to purge it if its liberal bias.

To be a Rethuglican these days you have to believe
1)A fertilized egg is a person
2)that you can dump billions of tonnes of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere with no effect whatsoever
3)that it is just fine for 10% of the people to control 60% of the wealth
4)that poor people should be taxed at the same rate (or higher) than the rich
5)that Earth is 6000 years old, give or take
6)and on and on.

I noticed. My point was that he had ample opportunity over the next two years to admit he’d been played for a fool, but doesn’t appear to have been paying enough attention. Now he wants to slag other media outlets for not connecting this recent study to climategate, to which it in fact had no connection. He still doesn’t get it.

As a defender of science, Stewart is lazy and unreliable. Had he kept himself informed, the climategate BS would never have caught him out. A bare minimum of checking with the sources available to him would have spared him the foolish statements on his own show and the miserable weaseling on O’Reilly’s. Apparently, he couldn’t be bothered to do a little fact checking.

OMFG. Along with Trebuchet and delasgatos @37, I was all fired up to excoriate everyone with a tsk, tsk about not understanding satire, hyperbole and such. Now I just want to crawl under the covers, chew off my cuticles and pretend it was all a very bad dream. A reality I definitely do NOT want to acknowledge!

Alex @ 57:
“My first reaction to that question was – why is a brilliant high energy theorist expected to have opinions on fossil fuels?”

I was kinda thinking the reason was b/c in her book she does comment on a wide range topics that aren’t strictly in her area, e.g., art, economics, Wall Street, so it seemed a fair question to me. And I agree with your conclusion: a scientist of her caliber, who also has the gift of presenting so well to the non-science population, is an important ambassador for bridging the gap between the value of basic theoretical research vs. practical application in the public’s mind. Considering the disciplined nature of their thinking that is the scientist’s stock in trade, I’m not too worried about someone like Dr. Randall saying anything too embarrasing for herself or on behalf of scientists in general.

I’d like to offer another hypothesis. I spent some time watching YouTube videos of Nickpour being interviewed on various shows: Fox, Hannity, CNN and others.

She comes across as a reasonable person, a moderate and she is not shy about bashing the GOP for nuttiness.

So, I think she was in on the skit and playing along acting like the wing nut she rails against in interviews. She doubtlessly knows the wingnut position and articulates it well. I don’t think she holds those positions but, rather, acted the foil.

Why do they talk like scientists are a cult, these are all rich people, whats stopping them from getting a degree in science if they are so suspcious.

Because they don’t see scientists. All they see are welfare queens driving welfare Cadillacs. And just like that nasty Reagan idea, it doesn’t matter if reality is completely different. It’s not just the scientists they see as getting fat on their dime — any and all government workers can be subject to that mindless slogan, “Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem!”

This isn’t even anything new. I think it’s a meme endemic to Christianity since at least the Dark Ages that anyone perceived as an opponent is in some way symmetrical to you — the Chanson de Roland has Muslims believing in a trinity of their own (Allah, Mohammed, and someone called Tervagant), even though that’s considered blasphemy in Islam. Certain approaches to religion seem to demand this; I’m sure someone who’s an expert in propaganda studies has written paper after paper on this subject. The American Right thinks it’s your God-given right to line your pockets any way you can get away with? Well, everyone must agree with you on some level, and if they don’t like it they’re probably trying to steal from you out of jealousy or whatever. I’m pretty sure that kind of insular thinking is why so many otherwise smart people become libertarians — they think that since they’re smart, they don’t need to pay attention to such dirty, plebeian things as evidence.

The darkly hilarious thing about all this is that, if God created everything, it is a kind of blasphemy not to study and gather evidence when making decisions; the decision not to is equivalent to idolatry and worship of one’s own mind, itself a created thing!

The only thing I could think of during that “interview” segment with Mandvi was to wonder if that woman had watched the original V and thought the “scientist conspiracy” made up by the aliens specifically to discredit scientists (as the people on Earth who were the highest threat to them) was actually a prescient warning about the nefarious purposes of scientists in real. Or something similarly nutty. Because apparently devoting years of your life to becoming an expert in something doesn’t mean that you know more than the average American, smartypants scientist types! FFS.

Stewart is a flabby friend of science, at best. When “climategate” first broke almost two years ago, he fell for it as hard as any talking head on Fox News. It is therefore particularly hypocritical of him to criticize other broadcast media for not covering this latest (and BTW, unrelated) story, since he ignored multiple independent investigations that cleared the scientists involved of any wrongdoing.

But that’s OK, he’s “just a comedian,” right?

No, and yes.

Ideally, it should be OK, because we shouldn’t be relying on comedians to analyze current events and ask tough interview questions. Expecting a comedian to be up to speed on scientific research really isn’t reasonable. We should expect journalists in broadcast and print media to be up to speed on it, to share the results of the climategate investigations, and to reveal when politicians are making false statements about reality.

But in the US, we can’t rely on the mainstream press to do any of that. So we rely on comedians to do it instead. So while we should criticize Stewart for making those mistakes, we should be criticizing actual reporters, editors, publishers, and news producers a thousand times harder.

But we know damn well they don’t give a shit, so we criticize Stewart instead, because two 30 minute comedy shows on Comedy Fucking Central have more intelligent news content than 24 hours of CNN and MSNBC combined.

Anybody else notice a disturbing trend wrt this video. It’s become a firestorm on reality-based blogs, and unfortunately, a lot of the language is rather sexist–terms like media “whore”, legally blonde…. OK, this woman is a dumb as a box of rocks–serially stupid based on her columns and past statements–but I really wonder if it would have attracted this much attention and ridicule if the rube were not a conventionally attractive woman.

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